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Linh Dinh
Linh Dinh (born 1963) is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer, translator, and photographer. Life Born in Saigon, Dinh left Vietnam on April 27, 1975 under the fake name of Lý Ký Kiệt. After living in Washington, Oregon, California and Virginia, he moved to Philadelphia in 1982, where he studied painting at the University of the Arts (at the same time as Phong Bui). After college, he survived for 13 years by working as an office clerk, house painter, house cleaner, and window washer. He showed his paintings, wrote and read his poems at literary venues around Philadelphia (including the Painted Bride in 1986), and hosted a poetry show on WXPN. In 1991, he co-founded The Drunken Boat, a bimonthly art and literary journal. Lasting just 6 issues, it nevertheless provided him a vehicle for promoting his growing body of work, which won him a Pew fellowship in 1993. He also wrote art reviews for the New Art Examiner, acted as critic-in-residence for Art In General in NYC, and guest-curated a show, "Toys and Incense," at Moore College of Arts. His poems, stories and translations began to appear in leading avant-garde journals such as Sulfur, Chicago Review, New American Writing and VOLT, as well as American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Denver Quarterly, and New York Stories, with poems and stories translated into Vietnamese, by Khế Iêm and Phan Nhiên Hạo, among others, published in Hợp Lưu and Tạp Chí Thơ. After a 1995 trip to Saigon and Hanoi, where he met Bảo Ninh, Nguyễn Huy Thiệp, Dan Duffy and Peter Zinoman, he edited Night, Again: Contemporary fiction from Vietnam (1996). In 1998, Singing Horse Press released his 1st chapbook, [http://www.singinghorsepress.com/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&products_id=2 Drunkard Boxing]. Returning to Saigon to live in 1999, he became familiar with the city's cutting-edge, underground writers, translating many of the poets and also translating English poetry for their benefit. Translations of poetry in both directions, and to and from other languages entirely, have become a major direction in his work. In 2001, he gave a reading with Nguyễn Quốc Chánh at the ERA Café, across the street from the fortress-like police headquarters, who sent several of their finest in plain clothes. As his career gained momentum in the US his “The Most Beautiful Word” was selected for Best American Poetry, but his work was considered too decadent and reactionary to be distributed in Vietnam. His first book, [http://www.sevenstories.com/book/?GCOI=58322100141520 Fake House] (2000), was confiscated at Saigon's post office when he went to pick up an author's copy. In Vietnam, he started to translate his English poems into Vietnamese, and in 2001, inspired by a Trần Dần piece sent to him by Phạm Thị Hoài, he published a poem written directly in Vietnamese, "Nhưng Rồi", in Tap Chi Tho. By late 2003, his Vietnamese poems were appearing regularly on Tiền Vệ. He returned to the United States in 2001, only to leave for Certaldo, Italy, where he lived from 2002 to 2004 as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers. This experience produced some of the writing in [http://www.sevenstories.com/book/index.cfm/GCOI/58322100747050 Blood and Soap] (Seven Stories Press, 2004) and an unfinished novel set in Vietnam. He began translating in and out of Italian. In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, England. More recently he has returned to Philadelphia, traveling to teach and give readings. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Italian, by himself, Portuguese, Japanese, German, by Gerd Burger, French, Polish, Icelandic, Finnish and Arabic. Blood and Soap has been translated into Japanese by Motoyuki Shibata (Hayakawa Publishing, 2008) and into Italian, by Giovanni Giri, as [http://www.hoepli.it/libro/elvis-phong-morto.asp?ib=9788887583601&pc=000010001001028 Elvis Phong è Morto!] (Spartaco, 2006). He has translated many international poets into Vietnamese, and many Vietnamese poets and fiction writers into English, including Nguyen Quoc Chanh, Tran Vang Sao, Van Cam Hai and Nguyen Huy Thiep. Poems by Linh Dinh have been selected for anthologies including Watermark (1998), Best American Poetry 2000, 2004 and 2007, Bold Words: A century of Asian American writing (2001), 26 nhà thơ Việt Nam đương đại (Tân Thư, Westminster, 2002), Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present (2003), , Asian American Poetry: The next generation (2004), Charlie Chan Is Dead II: At home in the world (2004), Gertrude Stein Awards: Innovative Poetry in English 2005/2006, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese poetry (2008). Writing Publishers Weekly reviews Linh Dinh's [http://www.chax.org/poets/dinh.htm American Tatts]: "The second effort in verse from this rising star of the small-press world turns his considerable powers to the depiction of acrid ironies, unmitigated disgust and politically charged gall. One of its opening poems imagines the poet as a half-knight, half-corpse "Cadavalier," exclaiming, "This pinkish universe is really nothing/ But a flocculation of my desires." A fast-moving poem called "Pick-Up Lines"—one of many about sexual discomfort—instructs a lover to "listen to my effluvium." Dinh (All Around What Empties Out) often imitates (or perhaps quotes) subliterary material: online personal ads, instant messaging, brochures and corporatespeak ("We've entered a new level of parking consciousness"), confessions of X-rated adventures by semiliterate writers. His swift lines also portray the kind of grotesque caricature ("The day before her abortion,/ The one-eyed lady accidentally swallowed her glass eye") used manipulatively in politics. Exploring disgust while toying with frames and assumptions, the poet becomes in one sense a real heir to Charles Bukowski; in another, he joins other younger poets (such as Drew Gardner and K. Silem Mohammad) in a movement toward hard-edged, provocative parody. It might be hard to call Dinh's volume pleasing, but readers of a certain temperament may well find it irresistible." Publications Poetry *''Drunkard Boxing''. Philadelphia, PA: Singing Horse Press, 1998. *''A Small Triumph over Lassitude''. Oakland, CA: R. Gladman, 2001. *''All Around What Empties Out''. Honolulu, HI: Subpress, 2003. *''American Tatts''. Tucson, AZ: Chax Press, 2005. *''Borderless Bodies''. Ottawa, IL: Factory School, 2005. *''Jam Alerts''. Tucson, AZ: Chax Press, 2007. *''I Haven't Been Anywhere, Man'' (with Jeremy Noel-Tod). Norwich, UK: Landfill, 2007. *''Some Kind of Cheese Orgy''. Tucson, AZ: Chax Press, 2009. Novel * Love Like Hate: A novel. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010. Short Fiction * Fake House: Stories. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000. * Blood and Soap: Stories. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004. Translated * Three Vietnamese Poets (translations). Tinfish, 2001.Three Vietnamese Poets, Abe Books. Web, Apr. 23, 2018. *Phan Nhiên Hạo, Night, Fish and Charlie Parker (bilingual edition). Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2006. Edited * Night, Again: Contemporary fiction from Vietnam. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1996. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Linh Dinh, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Apr. 5, 2014. See also *Asian-American poets *List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems *"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" *Linh Dinh at the Poetry Foundation *Linh Dinh at PoemHunter (12 poems) ;Prose *Casino Time essay by Dinh on the economic and social distinctions that are circumvented (or not) by the terms "recession" and "depression" ;Audio / video *Linh Dinh at PennSound *Linh Dinh at YouTube ;Books *Linh Dinh at Amazon.com ;About * AsianAmericanPoetry.Com Poet Profile On Linh Dinh *"Most Beautiful Words: Linh Dinh’s Poetics of Disgust", Jacket 27, Susan M. Schultz *"The Personal Becomes Political: The Powerful Intensity of Linh Dinh", Marianne Villanueva, Pacific Rim Review of Books *"In Conversation: Linh Dinh with Matthew Sharpe", The Brooklyn Rail, May 2004 *He Went Thataway, Philadelphia City Paper, January 11–18, 2001, Robert Malloy* *"Most Beautiful Words: Linh Dinh's poetics of disgust" at Jacket *State of the Union In his own photo blog, Dinh has been "tracking our deteriorating socialscape". *''This article uses text from the Viet Nam Literature Project. Original article is at Linh Dinh.'' Category:Academics of the University of East Anglia Category:Living people Category:American poets Category:1963 births Category:American writers of Vietnamese descent Category:Vietnamese writers Category:Pew Fellows in the Arts Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Vietnamese-American poets